Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Game 26, Played Sunday, May 4, 1924 (2nd game rained out)

The Seattle Indians played their 26th
game of the 1924 season on Sunday, May 4. This was the final game of
the fourth series of the year for the Indians, and their second
series against the Salt Lake City Bees. The season had started out in
Los Angeles against the Angels, followed by a trip to Salt Lake. The
Tribe then wandered via train back to Seattle to open their home
season against the Sacramento Solons, followed by another home series
against Salt Lake. This most recent weekly stretch concluded with
Seattle losing 6 to 3 to the visiting Bees. The second game was
called in the third inning for rain, thus giving the series win to
SLC, 4 games to 2. This put Seattle's record at 11 wins and 15
losses.

Just as a reminder, in the PCL of the
1920s, each team played a week-long series against their respective
opponents. Generally, each series would run Tuesday to Sunday, ending
the week with a double header. Then Monday was a travel day, with
travel at that time meaning by train. Sometimes, depending on
circumstances, you'll see a series go into Monday, but that's only if
the following series between all teams involves a close distance,
like Oakland/San Francisco or Vernon/Los Angeles. Rain-outs were
difficult to make up, so winning percentage was a very important
factor in determining which team won the League. Generally, each team
ended up playing between 195 and 210 games in a given year. After
four weeks of play, here's where the Pacific Coast League standings
stood.

Team Wins Losses PCT

San Francisco 19 9 .697

Vernon 18 10 .643

Salt Lake 14 12 .533

Portland 14 13 .519

Los Angeles 12 16 .429

Oakland 12 16 .429

Seattle 11 15 .423

Sacramento 9 18 .333

For the fourth week, here's the results
of each series:

Salt Lake 4, Seattle 2

Portland 5, Sacramento 1

San Francisco 6, Los Angeles 1

Vernon 5, Oakland 2

Where they will play for the fifth
week:

Portland at Seattle

Sacramento at Salt Lake

Vernon at San Francisco

Oakland at Los Angeles

If you'll notice the scheduling, its
almost like Pac-8 (10? [12]) basketball. A team like Vernon, which is
in the Los Angeles area (and had been in a territorial dispute with
the Angels over LA that required the intervention of Kennesaw
Landis), would travel via train from LA to the Bay Area, play Oakland
for a week, then take the short travel to San Francisco. LA would go
to SF and Oakland. So its kind of the same travel that UW and WSU
will do, going to play UCLA/USC on the same weekend, except the stay
is a week at a time.

Sacramento's early season pitching
seems to have been a blessing for whatever team faces them. The other
thing I noticed is Los Angeles seems to always get clobbered in one
side of a Sunday double header. But yes, Sacramento's pitching had
caused a surge in the Indians' batting statistics, followed by a
decline against Salt Lake. You can see from the compiled weekly stats
that Frank Tobin, Brick Eldred, and Ted Baldwin were the main threat
the Tribe had to smoke out the Bees. Although, if you look at Ray
Rohwer, he was still putting forth close to a .500 OBP for the week,
depending on how you look at the sacrifice hits, even if it was only
one base at a time. Ted Baldwin's three walks gave him 12 times on
base in 22 plate appearances. The sacrifice hit is something I think
needs to be looked at more in regard to Wade Killefer's managerial
approach. The Indians would sacrifice alot, it was obviously a part
of the manager's game. However, I'm not so sure about how the
official scorer awarded that and thus it would be hard to formulate
an OBP that would calculate the same as today's interpretation of the
OBP stat.

In this particular game, which turned
out to be the Sunday finale of the series, there was a 'first inning onslaught'. Here's the box, I think the marking of Frederick at LF
was wrong. He was a centerfielder and Duffy Lewis was, of course, a
great left fielder:

The days news
also featured a story about golf, which I include here because it
features Wade Killefer talking about how golfing got him in trouble
with Cincinnati and apparently ended his time there. He was traded to
the New York Giants along with Buck Herzog for Christy Mathewson,
Bill McKechnie and Edd Roush. I'm not sure, but has another player
ever been traded for three hall of famers?

About Me

Seattle Mariners fan and member of the Society for American Baseball Research. This site is dedicated to exploring, from a somewhat obtuse angle, the geometry of baseball's cultural influence (ambiguity intentional).